


What's in a Name?

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Character Study, Gen, I Have A Lot Of Feelings About Names, Spoilers for Episode 13 of Campaign 2, repressing memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 20:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14245011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Four people and their relationships with their names, for good or ill.





	What's in a Name?

**Author's Note:**

> So I was almost done with a completely different fic, and then I thought this up and immediately had to table the other fic until later. Because I have feelings about names, as someone who spent years choosing their own and spends most of their day *not* being called by it. 
> 
> And yes, obvious title is obvious.

Nott has collected many things over the years, rocks and sticks and all matter of shiny things. Right now her collection seems to be mostly buttons, which are shiny and colorful and portable. Portable is important, with all the running around she does, the sneaking and the hiding and the fighting. Sometimes, when things are quiet, she pours her button collection out onto a tavern table or the floor of her room and holds them, counts them, sorts them into piles based on qualities like size or material or how hard they were to steal. It’s soothing, and no one comments on it. It’s like how Caleb counts things when he’s stressed, or how Molly shuffles his cards, or Jester draws.

No one knows about Nott’s other collection. That’s because it’s invisible, and it doesn’t take up space except in her own head, and she has it with her wherever she goes. She hasn’t told anyone about it, not Caleb, not even Jester. Nott moves through crowds, ears twitching, adding to her invisible collection all the time, and it’s not even stealing, so she can’t get caught at it.

Nott had a name that wasn’t Nott, years ago. She has a feeling that if she tried very hard, she might even be able to remember it, but why would she? It must not have been a very good name, if it had so easily been replaced by a joke, an insult. Nott the Brave. It sounds all right when Caleb says it, when the others say it, because they don’t put a sneer in the syllables like the other goblins had. Someday though, someday she’ll be someone else, she’ll have a different body, and she’ll need a new name.

On nights when she can’t sleep, Nott goes over the collection in her mind, names sparkling like gems, like stars. She sorts them by number of syllables, by if they sound sharp or round, how easy or hard they’d be to pronounce. She’s still waiting to find the name that fits her perfectly, but until then she hoards names in her mind like a dragon hoards treasure.

**********

Beau sometimes wonders how her life would have turned out if her parents had given her a “girl’s” name. If they had named her Lilly or Sarah or gods forbid something like Clarabella. Would she have been content then, to wear the dresses with itchy lace on the sleeves, or to have long hair that took forever to brush and style? Would she have been obedient? Would her father have looked at her, if not with approval, at least not disapproval?

Her parents must have had a name in mind for a girl, hadn’t they? Beau wonders about that sometimes. Her father was the sort of man who would have thought that he could _will_ a boy child into existence by refusing to think about the alternative. She can imagine him staring down at tiny baby her with that look in his eyes, that disappointed frown. And yet, he had still given her that name. A “boy’s” name. Why? Did he think that if he named her Beauregard that maybe one day the gods would take the hint and transform her into what it was that he had always wanted? She had wished for that, once upon a time, back when she had given a damn about her father’s approval, before she had realized her father’s love could only be bought if she was quiet, if she did everything he told her to do without question. He would have wanted that in a son, she realized. Just another version of himself, someone to do what they were told.

“Beau means beautiful, did you know that?” Molly says to her one night when he’s had too much to drink.

“Oh trust me, I know,” Beau says. She’s waiting for a punchline, and is surprised when it doesn’t come. It’s not that she thinks herself ugly, but the setup for an insult was sitting right there, and it’s unlike Molly not to take it. “So what does Molly mean?”

Molly smiles. “Would you believe it means bitter?”

Beau knocks back another shot of fire whiskey. “Maybe we should switch. I’m the bitter one and you’re—“ She stops herself, because she’s not drunk enough to say it. There’s not enough alcohol in the whole world for that.

Molly, for his part, only laughs. “Nah, I like my name just fine. It’s a good name. Comfortable. Picked it out myself.” He gives her a thoughtful look. “Can’t imagine you with any other name, to be honest.”

“Neither can I,” Beau says. For good or ill, she’s grown into the name, and it fits her as well as her robes do.

**********

Jester would tell anyone her old name if they asked, but no one ever asks.

Maybe they think it’s a sensitive subject. It isn’t, not even a little. Maybe they think her mom actually named her Jester, like her trickster nature was evident at birth or something. It wasn’t. Her mom had given her a perfectly nice name, one that had suited her for most of her life, and then one day Jester had outgrown it and taken another that had fit her better. It was really that simple, and Jester had no idea why people sometimes talked about being “stuck” with a name. Names were the easiest thing to change about yourself. Maybe someday, when she was older, she would change it again, and changing it wouldn’t invalidate who she had been before, just like her name now didn’t change who she had been when she was younger. She’d be Jester until she wasn’t any more. Simple.

**********

“Lucien! You’re alive!”

Molly’s default expression is a smile, and he’s grateful for that because inside he’s burning hot and freezing cold all at once and he’s screaming.

The thing about trauma, about repressing memories is, well, sometimes your brain doesn’t let you choose just how much gets repressed. The memories you try to hide from yourself are grabby little things, like the tentacles of a kraken, and good memories can get dragged down into the dark as well. Memories aren’t neat little things either, not like a book one could read, and just skip the chapters they don’t like. Molly thinks maybe Caleb has a memory like a book, but Molly himself does not. He can remember most things up through his teen years and then everything else up until the carnival is just scraps, broken bits that he can’t fit back together, gaps that he fills in with what he suspects are lies, though they could be truths he can’t remember for all he knows. That name though. That name.

He’s not Lucien. Just thinking that name makes him feel like he’s going to be sick and he doesn’t know why except it’s _wrong._ He’s Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to his friends, he’s been Molly for over two years now, that’s who he is, who he _chose_ to be.

“Sorry friend, I’ve just got one of those faces,” Molly hears himself say. He sounds very calm, which is good. He doesn’t _feel_ calm at all. His body isn’t the only place that has scars. He can feel some old wound opening up in his mind, and any second now memories are going to start leaking out, black as old blood, black as the tabaxi’s fur. There’s almost a name on the tip of his tongue and Molly bites down hard on it, tastes his own blood.

“Lucien!” And now the tabaxi is _hugging_ him while saying that name, that _wrong_ name. Everyone is staring at him now, people he considers friends, if not nearly family. They look confused. He doesn’t want them to hear that name. That _other_ name. He is Mollymauk, Molly to his friends, these people are his friends, he’s Molly to them. He can feel himself mouthing his own name, as if it’s a charm to holding back all the memories he doesn’t want to remember. He’s going to start laughing, or crying, or screaming, and though it all he’ll just be saying his own name, over and over again. He’s Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly…..

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, I've been kinda 50/50 on whether Molly actually has amnesia or if he remembers everything and just lies about his past all the time, and then I realized there was sort of a hybrid option, where he's tried to repress all the bad things and a bunch of other stuff kinda got swept away as well. Because depression and trauma? A lot of memories can get lost in that. And sometimes they come back, even if you don't want them to.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if you want to stop by and say hi!


End file.
